


finder

by speakgreektome (epicionly)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Developing Friendships, Gen, Pre-Birth By Sleep, Pre-Canon, outside a few things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27106129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epicionly/pseuds/speakgreektome
Summary: Terra was the type of person who kept his heart to himself.  Aqua would’ve found the prospect lonely, perhaps even telling, had she not felt the same way sometimes.
Relationships: Terra & Aqua
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	finder

Before they had met, Master Eraqus had warned her that Terra found it difficult to warm up to new people.

It was an appropriate warning. Terra shook her hand, and, outside of training, never seemed to want to be in the same place as her. Otherwise, he ignored her, and spoke only short, terse sentences when he had to speak to her. It made it easy for Aqua herself to decide that he simply didn’t like her.

It was subtly accusative, a slight he had on her that she knew she didn’t deserve. Aqua bore it as patiently as she could, until months had passed by, and the subject came into mind again. They were resting on the training grounds after a nightly practice. Master Eraqus was absent for the night to attend to different affairs and practice had gone as scheduled.

Aqua felt frustrated.

She looked over the place that had become her home and confronted Terra about everything. About when he would finally stop treating her like an outsider.

“I don’t do that,” Terra said in response. When she looked at him, his eyebrows were furrowed. His fingers were tight over the handle of his wooden keyblade. He was lying, she thought, but then she realized he simply hadn't thought about how she'd feel about it.

“But do you see me like that?” she asked.

“I respect you,” he said.

“Do you?”

Terra’s jaw ticked. “You fight better than me,” he said. “You're not strong, but you're flexible. You watch. You work with what you have." He stood up. "There's not much to talk about."

“Why?”

He didn’t answer, nor he was kinder after that. She had his respect, he said, and she supposed that according to Terra was enough.

Aqua found it strenuous, to keep up with the waves of his thoughts. She gave up, after a while, and let the tension wash by her.

Peace became peace, eventually. Master Eraqus imposed some harsher exercises and praised Aqua's progress. Terra asked her for a rematch.

She pretended this was friendship and thought about it long enough that she could convince herself it was it.

Eventually, she felt she didn't need to pretend anymore.

\--

Friends for Terra seemed to be a new concept. He was growing comfortable with conversation outside of grunts and confirmations and negations, but every time Aqua stopped by his room to invite him out to town or asked if he wanted to join her in meditation instead, he looked absolutely lost.

“I have to train,” he said. And then, if it wasn't completely obvious, "Alone."

It was very painful to listen to and a bit annoying. Aqua was starting to wonder how long she was going to try.

“Training without focus won’t get anything done,” she said. “And all action requires rest. Didn’t Master Eraqus say that?”

Aqua had gauged it true. Terra was reluctant to challenge Master Eraqus’s teachings. She’d observed it earlier on, but it still surprised her how little it took to convince him of something as long as it followed their master’s tenants. Terra felt like a fish on a line who didn't know how to swim outside of familiar currents.

"Okay," Terra said, as though he was pulling teeth. "Let's meditate."

Meditation was an interesting thing when it came to keyblade wielder. The heart needed to be precariously strong and self-knowing; its truths came out the most when weary in battle. Aqua had always taken to it well, but Terra avoided it as if it revealed something about him he didn't want to acknowledge. That he almost seemed anxious, and feared that he might be crucified for it. Terra never meditated in the same room as anyone.

Aqua had no idea why it was, but she kept it to herself. Secrets were secrets; nobody needed to share of themselves what they didn’t want to.

“How long have you been studying with the Master?” she asked him, as they made their way down to the meditation hall.

Terra grunted. “Since I was ten."

“You’re fourteen now?”

He made another grunt, an affirmative. He was her age, she realized, and that startled her. She stood taller than him, tall and willowy, and Terra was not too short, but he was growing into a sturdiness which helped him stand strong against a hit.

“You started young.”

“Just two years before you,” he said. His wooden keyblade swung sharply into the air; he was trying to find something to do with himself. He didn't go anywhere without it as if constantly expecting an attack. “And I still can't beat you.”

They rounded the corner and Aqua pushed open the ornate wooden doors quickly, instead of pretending she didn't hear it. Light poured in through the windows, and if she breathed in deeply, the warm afternoon sleepiness felt like taking hold. Aqua was suddenly hit with a thought that it bothered her. This all bothered her.

"It's too nice to meditate," she said. "Want to go somewhere else?"

Terra seemed troubled by this sudden change in plan. "No," he said. "I'll just go training."

"Sure," she said. "I'll join you?"

\--

She wanted to be friends that trusted each other. They were older, but they weren't any kinder.

“Tell me about your family,” Aqua said, and because it was rude to ask when you didn’t offer it yourself, she added, “I'm not an only child.”

There was a tension in Terra’s jaw, a clench. “I’d rather not,” he said, heaving a particularly vicious swing at something on the training roulette. That the stiff tension in his back gave him away more than how fast it spun.

“All right,” she said. Then, “I’ll tell you about mine? I have a little brother who loves to swim at night. He'd be about ten now.”

“Sounds like a fish,” Terra offered, after a while. "So why doesn't he visit?"

Aqua smiled.

“I lost him,” she said. Aqua had really no idea why she was saying something so private. Master Eraqus knew this, of course, because he had taken her in, because it'd just been the two of them and then she'd been alone. But Terra was Terra, and he likely had no interest in her life. Except she did want him to have an interest. She wanted to be a part of this family, and Terra’s acceptance mattered greatly to her. “He went down one day and never came back up. It was hard to accept.”

Terra stopped swinging. He didn’t turn. He simply looked down at his keyblade. "I'm sorry about your brother."

"He would've liked you," Aqua said. "But that's not why I brought him up. I'm human too, Terra. I have weaknesses just like you."

Terra looked up at the sky as though he didn’t know what to say or do. “I'm not the best example of anything," he told her eventually. He was troubled. This was more than he'd admitted at all in the years they'd known each other. "I'm not a good friend or a good person."

“Light at often times is overwhelmed by the darkness,” Aqua replied. “And Keyblade Masters keep them in balance." She hesitated. "Balance isn't automatic. We all fluctuate. We're neither purely good nor purely bad. But we need each other, not loneliness, to be stronger.”

Terra faced her, frustrated. "Is that why you're-?"

“And because,” Aqua answered truthfully, because she saw something in Terra’s eyes that made her want to look away as much as it made her want to understand. She wanted Terra to understand _her._ She wanted Terra to let her understand _him._ “It'd be nice not to go keyblade gliding alone.”

Terra looked confused. “You’ve already mastered it. Master Eraqus said you were a natural.”

"That's not what I meant."

"If you wanted to spar," Terra said, growing uncomfortable.

“No,” she said, exasperated, “I wanted to be friends.”

"Oh." He looked like he wasn't sure how to be friends with people, which was ironic because Aqua wondered the same about herself sometimes. But Terra also said, “Lead the way, then,” and that made her glad.

Even if they both didn't know how, she thought they'd at least have a good try at it.

\--

In Master Eraqus’s tutelage, it was understood that character had a great impact on form as well as strength. What you practiced was what you showed. It didn't define her actions, but it made Aqua feel that everything she was doing was justified. Better off for both of them if she was the one to take responsibility for everything.

A part of her, though was uncomfortable with how much she felt she was reaching out to him. Surely he could be civil himself and do the same thing back.

But as the years passed, Aqua got used to it. It became a rock, to expect to be the one to look after everyone. Aqua was responsible for it all. Master Eraqus trusted her for that.

Terra was terrible with other people. His words came out as tactless as they could be rude at times, and his attention for someone was only as strong as his interest in what they had to say. Bull-headed, but could be talked into doing things.

He was better at talking through the fight--metaphorically, with keyblade in hand. Frivolities, mannerisms, the finer points of being a Keyblade master out of practiced decorum never really suited him. Aqua often envied him sometimes because that meant he was being more honest about himself. And in the small moments, she realized that not expecting anything was the best move of all.

“Are you going anywhere after this?” Aqua asked, after one morning practice. She'd been talking in the silence as they were going through the motions cooling down, about how she'd been trying out crafting after having seen some experts at it in Radiant Garden. A hobby was good for mindfulness, Master Eraqus had said.

Terra’s mouth curled back. “Out,” he said, tersely. "I'll be a while."

Once, she might’ve taken offense; but Terra had never been good at hiding his own moods or sharing his thoughts. Either way, it wasn’t intentional—Aqua’s own brand of passive-aggressiveness was entirely different from how Terra responded to his own unhappiness about himself. You needed some space sometimes. It'd only really be a problem if Master Eraqus said it was.

"Anywhere in particular?"

He looked at her, and she thought and wondered what she was waiting for after all this time. There would be no change, even as subtle as he had come to warm up to her.

But Terra said, “I'm getting your birthday present. Wait here," and that left her surprised.

\--

It was a bucket of ribbons, because of course Terra would think of that was appropriate as a gift.

But that was fine. There was a reason Aqua wore long-flowing fabric at her waist --she liked how the material flowed like a skirt.

The gift was a nice thought.

\--

"Have you ever heard of the Paopu fruit?" she asked.

"A pow-what?"

_\--_

It turned out that Terra knew absolutely nothing about the legend of the star-shaped fruit.

“I don’t think that’s real,” he said, seemingly troubled by the idea that she might have.

“I think it’s charming,” she said. “It would be nice if it were true.”

Terra gave her an assessing look. “Did you want something like that?” He sounded confused, somewhat hesitant, as though just realizing now that perhaps people did like people in that way. That Aqua might feel that way with anyone. “With who?”

“No one.” Aqua had never really considered herself a romantic and she wasn’t really one at all; she was a pragmatist, and she liked things being in balance and order. An equilibrium weathered the storms in one’s heart. “It’s interesting.”

“So why do you think it’s charming?”

“I don’t know,” she said truthfully, turning the fruit this way and that. “But out of all the stories that we’ve heard from the worlds, don’t you think this is a meaningful one? We’ve heard of the lights of children's hearts rebuilding the worlds lost to the darkness. There’s stories where there exists a world full of dreams and dream eaters. A cavern of jewels lies in the mouth of a cat. The keyholes to each world is a gateway to its heart. A story about something linking two people together just seems…powerful. Promising.”

It was hard to describe it. Sweet wasn’t it. Kind wasn’t it either. Was eternal a better word? A promise that was timeless, that went beyond everything you could experience in life that'd pull you away. Looking under the same sky, even if in different worlds, it could be blue or orange or grey.

Terra, by nature, was very taciturn and didn’t take to abstract ideas so much as what could be done and what was being done. He looked at her, and said, "I guess so. It's a nice thought."

But he didn't make fun of her for it, so she supposed that was nice.

_\--_

If she had been asked to quantify or to describe their relationship, Aqua would have said it playing at what was supposed to be friendship, or something else.

Terra was doubtless. He was careless. He saw one thing and said everything else the next. If you told him something, he would believe it. Terra didn’t doubt people or their motives. But he was, she thought, incredibly stupid when it came to expressing himself.

Terra was the type of person who kept his heart to himself. Aqua would’ve found the prospect lonely, perhaps even telling, had she not felt the same way sometimes.

Sometimes, she convinced herself it was exasperating because Aqua felt more longing for the brief things of what was more than the what could be.

Could you really be content, she wondered, with things like this? Could anyone ever?

\--

“Aqua,” Terra said, at the end of it. It would never be Terra who began it, but Aqua would be waiting, ever patient. He stood there, and hesitated. For all that he was growing taller than Aqua, he seemed to feel dwarfed by her. She knew nothing of what made him feel inadequate. She wished he stood taller for what he had and was.

“Terra,” she responded in kind, when he didn’t continue. Mere moments ago, the darkness that had come into play with his keyblade had shocked her, and she knew now he was wondering how to ask her to keep it quiet.

He shifted, horrified, upset, regretful. Aqua waited patiently. A part of her, wondered what he'd say, if express anything all.

"I--" He interrupted himself. "Don't tell the Master."

Suddenly, it all made sense, about why Terra wanted to listen to other people but also didn't. It wasn't Master Eraqus's fault, Aqua reminded herself, and that made it easier to accept this part of Terra.

It'd go away, she decided. Better to brush it off.

“You don’t sound like you,” Aqua said. On an impulse, she wanted to reach out and flicked that cowlick in his hair off his face. It was a sudden thought. She wasn't sure what prompted it.

Terra didn't say anything. He only looked at her, and she wondered if she'd tried to do what she'd wanted, whether or not he'd have pulled away.

“You're my friend, Terra,” Aqua told him. “And you can trust me, even if you don't think we are.”

He looked at her then. “We _are_ friends,” he clarified, looking unsettled. He didn't even look convinced himself.

It wasn't anything more than what he said it was.

But because it was Terra, and because it was her, Aqua understood.

_End._

**Author's Note:**

> An old fic I thought I'd keep working on (timestamp says three years ago ~2017) but never did for years. Still very fond of it.


End file.
